skeptical_lurker

Karma: 2,784

skeptical_lurker Feb 22, 2017, 12:58 PM
6 points
in reply to: math’s comment on: Open Thread, Feb. 20 - Feb 26, 2017
No, but I’m not under the illusion that I can currently make any significant contribution to changing politics—its certainly not my area of comparative advantage, but I could at least leave the country if things did start to get that bad. There would be fairly obvious warning signs that would not require a close watch on current events.

skeptical_lurker Feb 21, 2017, 3:26 AM
3 points
in reply to: username2’s comment on: Open Thread, Feb. 20 - Feb 26, 2017
‘Overuse of Occam’s Razor?’

Anyway, I know that psychology is complex and the explanations I come up with are only my best hypothesis, not one that I would necessarily have >50% confidence in—I should have made that clear. Still, I have trouble thinking of other explanations for why intelligent, educated, friendly people claim to believe that about 50% − 95% of the population are evil?

Or that most old people deliberately vote for bad things because why should they care if they are going to die soon anyway?

Or that there is >50% probability that Brexit will literally lead to a neo nazi state in the UK within 10 years?

Or that the best way to defend democracy in the USA is to assassinate Trump and Pence… despite the fact that they were democratically elected and that the sympathy vote would push the USA far more to the right?

Or that someone would attempt to prove to me that a political party are evil, by showing me a meme saying that they are evil, as if messing about with photoshop confers truth, and then be unable to provide a single non-meme-based argument to support this assertion?

I mean, these beliefs are so crazy that if only one person were expressing these opinions I might worry that they are showing the early warning signs of some form of clinical paranoia. But its widespread, among people who otherwise seem functional.

skeptical_lurker Feb 21, 2017, 1:54 AM
6 points
in reply to: username2’s comment on: Open Thread, Feb. 20 - Feb 26, 2017
All good points, in the general case—I myself frequently read about things I disagree with. However...

Even in cases that appear to be clear cut fear or violence mongering it may be that they joined the group to have its messages in their news feed for awareness, because they refuse to flinch from the problem.

That is more of a LW thing. Most normal people don’t act like this, and the person I was thinking of certainly doesn’t. Politics is about waving the flag for your tribe, and trying to actually understand the other tribe’s point of view is like waving the enemy flag—treason! To show that they are loyal, many people seem to be adopting the maximally uncharitably point of view, or at least they are in the last few years.

Of course, its also possible that that is why some people are advocating violence—they wouldn’t really want violence, and they certainly wouldn’t personally assault someone, but they advocate violence because it shows more tribal loyalty then just advocating peaceful protest.

skeptical_lurker Feb 20, 2017, 10:08 PM
14 points
on: Open Thread, Feb. 20 - Feb 26, 2017
I think about politics far too much. Its depressing, both in terms of outcomes and in terms of how bad the average political argument is. It makes me paranoid and alienated if people I know join facebook groups that advocate political violence/murder/killing all the kulaks, although to be fair its possible that those people have only read one or two posts and missed the violent ones. But most of all its fundamentally pretty pointless because I have no desire to get involved in politics and I’m sure that wrt any advantages in terms of helping me to better understand human nature, I’ve already picked all the low hanging fruit.

So anyway, I’m starting by committing to ignore all politics for a week (unless something really earth-shattering happens). I’ll post again in a week to say whether I stuck to it, and if I didn’t, please downvote me to oblivion.

Oh, and replying to replies to this post are excepted from this rule.

skeptical_lurker Dec 15, 2016, 2:53 AM
0 points
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: Traditions and Rationality.
Except some people do sleep with strangers without charging money.

skeptical_lurker Dec 14, 2016, 1:04 PM
4 points
in reply to: bogus’s comment on: Open thread, Dec. 12 - Dec. 18, 2016
I too would like a more pacifist president, but realistically neither the libertarians or the greens were going to win. But this is more because of the huge amount of money spent on the military. A conventional war would be bad, but I don’t see that it would be disastrous. NATO would easily beat Russia, and I’m not sure who would win in a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, but it would be over quickly—the decisive factor is largely naval, and naval battles are over quickly. Neither country can deploy a large fraction of their army against the other as they are constrained by the number of troop ships and the distance involved.

As for bombing middle eastern countries, well that’s been going on since 2001 and will probably continue for the foreseeable future, regardless of who wins in 2020.

skeptical_lurker Dec 13, 2016, 11:08 PM
0 points
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Traditions and Rationality.

For the rest of us, it’s a bit more complicated. It could be politically difficult to discuss, because male sexuality is nowadays usually shamed or dismissed as “patriarchy”, but the short version is that many men have a preference for things that in the ancient evolutionary environment would be evidence that the child is biologically theirs… and let’s just say that a history of sex with strangers for money feels like an evidence in the opposite direction.

But, if some men have a politically incorrect preference for virgins, how is a history of whoreing any different from a history of casual sex?

skeptical_lurker Dec 13, 2016, 10:39 PM
11 points
on: Open thread, Dec. 12 - Dec. 18, 2016
There’s been a lot of discussion about Trump. But I think the actual most important aspect is one that I havn’t seen discussed in any depth anywhere—there seems to be speculation that Peter Theil will be advise Trump on tech issues.

The president’s (unofficial?) technology advisor will be someone who has donated to miri/open ai/life extension. This is great news, and I would argue far more important than any other factor except nuclear war. This comes at a time when AI risk seems to be starting go mainstream, when Obama has had discussions on AI risk (that he did not seem to understand).

So, I’d like to see discussion on what this could lead to, whether there is a possibility that the US government might start funding life extension/AI risk research. One factor that does seem a little worrying is that, with any other president, I might be wondering whether MIRI might be able to apply for government funding or receive official recognition or be incorporated into a government body in some way. (does the US government do that sort of thing?) But given the horrific things that EY has said about Trump and the Borderer-descended people who voted for him, I doubt that’s possible anymore.

Oh well. I suppose there are other people who can be pointed to as experts on AI risk—Bostrom for instance—although he isn’t a US citizen.

skeptical_lurker Dec 13, 2016, 9:47 PM
0 points
in reply to: morganism’s comment on: Land war in Asia
Stalingrad was an important strategical objective in that theater, but the Germans focused on it to the exclusion of all else, which is why they got encircled.

skeptical_lurker Dec 8, 2016, 2:39 AM
2 points
in reply to: NatashaRostova’s comment on: Land war in Asia

Tolstoy makes the argument that attributing Russia’s defeat of Napoléon as due to some grand strategic brilliance is nonsensical,

Choosing to abandon and burn Moscow, while perhaps not strategic brilliance, seems like an impressive willingness to make sacrifices.

skeptical_lurker Dec 8, 2016, 2:35 AM
9 points
on: Land war in Asia
I don’t think invading Russia was a bad decision per se, the problem is invading Russia during the winter which is what should have been learnt from Napoleon, who’s army was destroyed by the winter, not by the Russian army. There was a long distance to cover to Moscow, and Germany should have attacked around the start of spring, not 22 June (Napoleon attacked on 24 June). If that was not possible during 1941, they should have waited till 1942.

More irrational was Hitler’s decision to order troops at Stalingrad not to retreat, saying roughly “Too many German lives have been lost to retreat now” which is very much sunk cost bias. For that matter, the decision to prioritise Stalingrad was made because of the name. True, capturing the city named after the Russian leader would have damaged morale, but this is a political argument, which Hitler may have overestimated because his expertise was in politics. Perhaps actually trying to capture the oil fields, while more mundane, would have been a better objective?

Towards the end of the war, Britain had a plan to assassinate Hitler, but chose not to put it into action partially because Hitler was acting irrationally and whoever succeeded him would perhaps have been a better military leader.

skeptical_lurker Dec 1, 2016, 7:27 PM
1 point
in reply to: Vaniver’s comment on: On the importance of Less Wrong, or another single conversational locus

If you’re working for $x an hour, do you think you would take fewer that 100/x times as long as someone who is experienced at web dev?

Fair pay would be $x an hour given that it takes me 100/x times as long as someone who is experienced at web dev. However in reality estimates of how long the work will take seem to vary wildly—for instance you and Viliam disagree by an order of magnitude.

The more efficient system might be for me to work with someone who does have some web dev experience, if there is someone else working on this.

skeptical_lurker Dec 1, 2016, 12:23 AM
3 points
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: On the importance of Less Wrong, or another single conversational locus
What’s hilariously ironic is that our problem immigrants are Eugine’s sockpuppets, when Eugine is NRx and anti-immigrant.

That Eugine is so much of a problem is actually evidence in favour of some of his politics.

skeptical_lurker Dec 1, 2016, 12:17 AM
0 points
in reply to: Vaniver’s comment on: On the importance of Less Wrong, or another single conversational locus
I can code in python, but I have no web dev experience—I could work out what algorithms are needed, but I’m not sure I would know how to implement them, at least not off the bat.

Still, I’d be willing to work on it for less then $100 per hour.

skeptical_lurker Nov 15, 2016, 7:26 PM
9 points
in reply to: James_Miller’s comment on: Open thread, Nov. 14 - Nov. 20, 2016
I’m assuming that the reason these people are pushing the idea that at least 50% of the US population are racist is because they want to normalise racism. Otherwise, they’rd be shooting themselves in the foot, normalising the very idea they are trying to stop, and no-one could be that stupid … right?

\s

skeptical_lurker Nov 15, 2016, 2:22 PM
9 points
in reply to: Artaxerxes’s comment on: Open thread, Nov. 14 - Nov. 20, 2016
I think there are three main uses of which I am aware:

1) General sense of wonder and awe at real things: pantheistic ‘the universe is god’; sacred geometry; nature worship.

2) Rituals, yoga, meditation without religious or paranormal baggage.

3) Paranormal beliefs that do not fit into an existing religious framework, possibly because you don’t want to cause conflict between different religions so you believe in a non-denominational ‘supreme being’.

skeptical_lurker Nov 15, 2016, 2:12 PM
0 points
in reply to: HGTV’s comment on: Open thread, Nov. 14 - Nov. 20, 2016
Does anyone worry that (rot13 as possible memetic hazard for highly paranoid people)

Nyy bhe vagrearg npgvivgl vf orvat fgberq naq va gur shgher ragvgvrf’ qrpvfvbaf ba jurgure gb gehfg hf (be cbfguhzna irefvbaf bs hf) jvyy or cnegvnyyl onfrq hcba jurgure be abg jr fgnoorq rnpu bgure va tnzrf bs bayvar qvcybznpl?

skeptical_lurker Nov 14, 2016, 9:10 PM
0 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Yudkowsky vs Trump: the nuclear showdown.

It’s not good for the Yen when the US wants to introduce trade tariffs. It’s also not good for the Euro.

With the stock market it’s also not clear to interpret the message. Normally risky times mean that traders sell stocks and buy treasury bonds. Given that Trump suggested he might partly default on US debt, that’s not a safe move.

Good point—I had not considered this. Still, I would assume that even if the dollar does not go down, there would still be some sort of sign of danger in the markets if there were possible economic problems. Maybe US stocks going down as money flows into overseas assets?

But the role of the US president shouldn’t be to beat other people but to create win-win situations.

Ideally, yes, but the world is not some perfect utopia, and there are external threats that do need to be beaten.

skeptical_lurker Nov 14, 2016, 9:05 PM
0 points
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Yudkowsky vs Trump: the nuclear showdown.

I wouldn’t bet my money on such outcome, though. Would you?

Not soon. Maybe later, as solar takes over from oil. But maybe we can move in that direction.

skeptical_lurker Nov 13, 2016, 9:32 AM
1 point
in reply to: chron_duplicate0.28840544749982655’s comment on: Yudkowsky vs Trump: the nuclear showdown.
To veer off topic: is there an analogous historical case to “uncontrolled third-world immigration” and if so what happened?